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Dravidian people
Dravidian peoples Previous (Drama)Next (Drawing and quartering) Dravidian Total population approx. 250 million (2006) Regions with significant populations India Andra Pradesh Tamil Nadu Karnataka Kerala Pakistan Balochistan Sri Lanka Languages Dravidian languages Religions Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism Related ethnic groups Brahui people · Gondi people · Kannadigas · Kodava · Malayalis · Tamils · Telugus · Tuluvas Dravidian peoples refers to the peoples that natively speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. The language group appears unrelated to Indo-European language families, most significantly the Indo-Aryan language. Populations of Dravidian speakers live mainly in southern India, most notably Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, and Tulu. Dravidian has been identified as one of the major language groups in the world, with Dravidian peoples dwelling in parts of central India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Southwestern Iran, Southern Afghanistan, and Nepal. The origins of the Dravidian people and language has been difficult to ascertain. Anthropologists are largely at odds. A number of earlier anthropologists held the view that the Dravidian peoples constituted a distinct race. Some argue the origin of Dravidian before the Indo-Aryan invasion, making the Indus Valley civilization Dravidian. Still others argue that Dravidian held sway in a much larger region, replacing Indo-Aryan languages. Genetic studies have concluded that the Dravidian people are not a distinct race but, rather, a common genetic pool between the Dravidian and non-Dravidian people in South India. Some suggest that the British Raj attempted to create a distinction between the races as a way of dividing and controlling the people of India. Whether India is one race or several, the people are united today by a constitution within the framework of a parliamentary government. India stands today as a diverse people, representing most the world's religions with many ethnic groups, united in one nation. The future of India as a unified people has become increasingly stronger with the establishment of the Republic of India in 1947. Contents hide 1 Dravidian language 2 Concept of the Dravidian people 3 Dravidian peoples 4 Origins 5 Genetic classifications 6 Political ramification 6.1 India 6.2 Sri Lanka 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links 11 Credits Dravidian language More than 200 million people speak Dravidian languages. They appear unrelated to languages of other known families like Indo-European, specifically Indo-Aryan, the other common language family on the Asian subcontinent. Some linguistic scholars incorporate the Dravidian languages into a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family, which includes the ancient Elamite language (Haltami) of southwestern Iran. Dravidian constitutes one of the primary linguistic groups in the proposed Nostratic language system, linking almost all languages in North Africa, Europe, and Western Asia into a common family with its origins in the Fertile Crescent sometime between the last Ice Age and the emergence of proto-Indo-European four to six thousand years B.C.E. The best-known Dravidian languages include Tamil (தமிழ்),Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Malayalam (മലയാളം), Telugu (తెలుగు), and Tulu (ತುಳು). Three subgroups exist within the Dravidian linguistic family: North Dravidian, Central Dravidian, and South Dravidian, matching for the most part the corresponding regions in the Indian subcontinent. Concept of the Dravidian people The term Dravidian derives from the Sanskrit term Dravida, historically referring to Tamil. Adopted following the publication of Robert Caldwell's Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages (1856);1 a publication that established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world. Seventy-three languages presently have been classified as Dravidian.2 Further, the languages spread out and cover parts of India, South Western Iran, South Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.3 Robert Caldwell, a Catholic missionary, used the term Dravidian to refer to the people of South India. Although speakers of the various Dravidian languages in the twenty first century have mainly occupied the southern portion of India, the ancient domain of the Dravidian parent speech remains undetermined. Dravidian speakers probably lived widespread throughout India, including the northwest region. The circumstances of the advent of Dravidian speakers in India have been an enigma. Vague linguistic and cultural ties exist with the Urals, with the Mediterranean area, and with Iran. Possibly a Dravidian-speaking people described as dolichocephalic (long-headed from front to back) Mediterraneans mixed with brachycephalic (short-headed from front to back) Armenoids and established themselves in northwestern India during the fourth millennium B.C.E. Along their route, those immigrants may have come into an intimate, prolonged contact with the Ural-Altaic speakers, thus explaining the striking affinities between the Dravidian and Ural-Altaic language groups. Between 2000 and 1500 B.C.E., a fairly constant movement of Dravidian speakers proceeded from the northwest to the southeast of India, and about 1500 B.C.E. three distinct dialect groups probably existed: Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, and Proto-South Dravidian. Dravidian peoples Brahui people: People belonging to the north-Dravidian subgroup, mostly found in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. They now culturally and ethnically largely resemble the Balochi people around them, with whom they have mixed with substantially. Kurukh: People belonging to the north-Dravidian subgroup. Found in India and Bangladesh, the only Dravidian language indigenous in Bangladesh. Khonds: Tribal people who speak the Dravidian Kui language. Mostly found in the eastern Indian states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Gond people: A prominent group of Dravidian-speaking tribal people inhabiting the central region of India. Kannadiga: People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup. Mostly found in Karnataka and parts of northern Kerala. Kodava: People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup. Mostly found in the Kodagu (Coorg) region of Karnataka. Malayali: People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup found primarily in Kerala. Tamil: These people belong to south-Dravidian linguistic subgroup. Mostly found in Tamil Nadu, parts of Kerala, parts of Sri Lanka, South Africa, Singapore and Malaysia. Telugu: These people belong to south-Dravidian subgroup (formerly classified with the Central Dravidian but now more specifically in the South Dravidian II or South Central Dravidian inner branch of the South Dravidian.4 Mostly found in Andhra Pradesh also in Orissa and Tamil Nadu. Tuluva: People belonging to the south Dravidian subgroup, found in southern Karnataka and northern Kerala, alternatively named Tulu Nadu. Origins Areas in South Asia populated by Dravidian peoples The Dravidian-speaking people may have spread throughout the Indian subcontinent before a series of Indo-Aryan migrations. In that view, the early Indus Valley civilization (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) have been often identified as Dravidian.5 The Dravidians moved into an already Indo-Aryan speaking area after the oldest parts of the Rig Veda had been composed.6 The Brahui population of Balochistan has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict population, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages had been formerly much more widespread and supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan languages. Harvcoltxt, Thomason, and Kaufman (1988) state that strong evidence exists supporting that Dravidian influenced Indic through "shift," that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages. Elst (1999) claims that the presence of the Brahui language, similarities between Elamite and Harappan script as well as similarities between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian indicate that those languages may have interacted prior to the spread of Indo-Aryans southwards and the resultant intermixing of languages. Harvcoltxt and Erdosy (1995, 18) states that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Old Indo-Aryan is that the majority of early Old Indo-Aryan speakers had a Dravidian mother tongue which they gradually abandoned. Even though the innovative traits in Indic could be explained by multiple internal explanations, early Dravidian influence provides the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once, it becomes a question of explanatory parsimony (the simplest explanation is most often correct); moreover, early Dravidian influence accounts for the several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed (Harvcoltxt, Thomason, and Kaufman, 1988, 141–144). Genetic classifications The genetic views on race differ in their classification of Dravidians. According to population geneticist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, based on work done in the 1980s, Indians are genetically Caucasian, but Lewontin rejects the label Caucasian. Cavalli-Sforza found that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians. Dr. Eduardas Valaitis, in 2006, found that India is genetically closest to East and Southeast Asians with about 15 percent more genetic similarity than to Europeans; he also found that India could be considered very distinct from other regions.7 Genetic anthropologist Stanley Marion Garn considered in the 1960s that the entirety of the Indian Subcontinent to be a "race" genetically distinct from other populations. Others, such as Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding, claim South Indians are genetic intermediaries between Europeans and East Asians. Studies of the distribution of alleles on the Y chromosome,8 microsatellite DNA,9 and mitochondrial DNA10 in India have cast overwhelming doubt for a biological Dravidian "race" distinct from non-Dravidians in the Indian subcontinent. This doubtfulness applies to both paternal and maternal descent; however, it does not preclude the possibility of distinctive South Indian ancestries associated with Dravidian languages. Political ramification India Some Indians believe that the British Raj exaggerated differences between northern and southern Indians beyond linguistic differences to help sustain their control of India. The British Raj ended in 1947, yet all discussion of Aryan or Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India. That the British used that only as their "Divide and rule" blueprint for taking over the region has become widely believed. According to that view, the British also used that "theory" of perceived differences between so-called "Aryans" and "Dravidians" to propagate racist beliefs concerning the inherent "inferiority" of the Dravidians when compared to the "Aryans," thus justifying their colonization of South Asia (since the British identified themselves as "Aryans"). Studies putting forth recent genetic studies as proof that distinct races exist on the Indian subcontinent have been published. Sri Lanka In Sri Lanka, the view that the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils belong to two different ethnic and linguistic families have further complicated the current ethnic conflict and the civil war. Sinhalese (like Dhivehi) constitutes an Indo-Aryan language that exists in the southern part of South Asia. See also Tamil people Out of India theory Tamil Nadu Sri Lanka Languages of India